In my pre­vi­ous post of my expe­ri­ence in South Africa, Andre raised a great ques­tion in his com­ment that I felt deserved more than just a reply, and I wanted to address it prop­erly in a blog post.

The question/issue was: Would I rec­om­mend peo­ple to be involved with pro­grams like SE101 with the issues of sus­tain­abil­ity, cost and knowl­edge at hand? ( Please read my pre­vi­ous blog post for more insight)

Essen­tially, what I believe can be framed in 3 ways:

1) Moti­va­tion

FirstMotivationalPoster

Image taken from: http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/motivational-cartoons

It has become the social ‘cool’ these days to par­tic­i­pate on trips to devel­op­ing nations to ‘help’, be it a stint in Kenya to build wells, build­ing homes in Mex­ico or help­ing the Orang Utan preser­va­tion in Bor­neo etc. I believe that if you want to par­tic­i­pate on a trip of such, you need to believe in its cause,  what you are con­tribut­ing and what you want to learn.

The worst thing to do is to spend over $4,000 on a trip like this, write it down in your resume and tell your friends you’re going away to a 3rd world coun­try receiv­ing [insert ’ that is so cool’ response here] and… that’s it. I believe that peo­ple need to be account­able when vol­un­teer­ing. No one is going to turn around and say “you are so self­ish for vol­un­teer­ing because all you are tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion in your trip is your­self and hav­ing that expe­ri­ence.” The responses would likely be along the lines of “that’s so cool you’re vol­un­teer­ing. You’e doing such a good thing!”

Therefore, I  believe that peo­ple  need to be aware of the costs asso­ci­ated with vol­un­teer­ing. Let me break a typ­i­cal 3 week trip down for you ( con­ser­v­a­tive rough estimate):

Air­fare $2,500

Acco­mo­da­tion $500

Food $500

Pay­ing the organization/prof/administrative fees/utilities $500

Total: Approx $4,000

That’s alot of money. Now, with the same amount, you can make 160 $25 micro­cre­dit loans at places like Kiva and change the lives of 160 peo­ple. You can spon­sor 200 chil­dren at World Vision by pay­ing $20 for their yearly school fees. You can feed the home­less for a month in Van­cou­ver donat­ing to the soup kitchen. That’s 160 lives you can change. From sit­ting in front of your com­puter with sev­eral clicks of your mouse.

Get the sense of com­par­i­son? You may argue that donat­ing the money is dif­fer­ent than the actual expe­ri­ence of vol­un­teer­ing, and yes I agree. How­ever, what is stop­ping you then from vol­un­teer­ing online in places around world ie. writ­ing grants, doing research, or even, actu­ally fol­low­ing up with the organ­i­sa­tions and places that you have vol­un­teered at? Or even vol­un­teer locally at your home­less soup kitchen?

Or are you one of those peo­ple that vol­un­teer for the sake of its exotic­ness, take a ‘hol­i­day’ jump­ing from one coun­try to another each for a month, to write down in your resume that you’ve helped build refugee cen­ters in Cam­bo­dia or [insert some form of pro­gram vol­un­teer­ing here].

Vol­un­teer­ing is alot more seri­ous when you think of it in terms of oppor­tu­nity cost — what you are giv­ing up and whose life you are impacting.

2) Sus­tain­abil­ity

Now, if you have the right inten­tions and moti­va­tion, the next ques­tion you should really be ask­ing your­self is: Is  the pro­gram I am plug­ging myself into sus­tain­able? Is this the most effec­tive way I can con­tribute my time and money (refer to point one on cost com­par­i­son) to give the most impact?

This is where research comes in. Research your pro­gram, talk to peo­ple, con­nect with past par­tic­i­pants, find out where your money goes to. Research, research, research.

Let me give you some examples.

Pro­gram 1: Build­ing wells in rural Kenya to pro­vide a water source for local villagers.

Sounds great right? Well, a lit­tle more research would tell you that by par­tic­i­pat­ing in a pro­gram like this and build­ing wells, you’ve just put the local water source provider, who has a fam­ily of 5 out of busi­ness along with the sev­eral other vil­lage water source providers out of busi­ness because you not only built one well, you built 3 wells in 3 dif­fer­ent vil­lagers. Congratulations.

Pro­gram 2: Col­lect­ing old clothes for donat­ing to local vil­lages in Vietnam

Sounds like a good cause? Well, a lit­tle more research would tell you that all your clothes have just put the local tai­lors who sells shirts for $1 out of busi­ness. Congratulations.

These 2 exam­ples are the clas­sic typ­i­cal pro­grams that you can find all round.

So essen­tially, please par­tic­i­pate wisely. There are so many NGOs these days that you need to research and fil­ter. The world doesn’t need another vol­un­teer that is help­ing oth­ers at the expense of another person.

3) Pre­pare

So you have the right moti­va­tions, the right pro­gram and organ­i­sa­tion. The last thing: Pre­pare. In the right way.

I can­not even begin to empha­size this last point enough. In my last post I described what it was like, to be on the ground and be com­pletely par­a­lyzed by my own igno­rance. Yes, I have been guilty of it and wish what I know now.

Just like any nor­mal sit­u­a­tion, you need to be pre­pared as much as you can. Don’t swal­low what is given to you. Inves­ti­gate and learn.

Side Note: I want to make it CLEAR, that there is a big dif­fer­ence between sign­ing up for labour vol­un­teer­ing, as opposed to ‘pro­gram’ vol­un­teer­ing. The dif­fer­ence lies in 1), you are tap­ping into an area which needs your time and labour, ie. hur­ri­caine relief work in New orleans, as opposed to, 2) you are par­tic­i­pat­ing in a pro­gram that has a frame­work ie. build­ing homes in Mexico.

What I have been address­ing are PROGRAMS.

***

So, in summary, to answer the ques­tion of whether I would rec­om­mend peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in vol­un­teer pro­grams… My answer is: I would. As long as they:

1) Have the right moti­va­tion. Know the cost ben­e­fit break­down of the trip.

2) Make sure it is a sus­tain­able pro­gram. Research.

3) Pre­pare. In the RIGHT way.

These 3 cri­te­rias seem very sim­ple, but it’s the sim­ple things that we for­get when we get caught up in an idea and in our lives.

Good luck vol­un­teer­ing! If you have stories/experiences to share, I would love to hear them.